Alternative to Cloning

[Midaychi]

IE: I've got a hammer, let's hit some nails that don't really need to be hit.

As a thread I saw once somewhere else mentions, cloning *as is* trivializes death, and puts mass revivification into the hands of any clown that can work a grab and work a button. Often time's that is LITERALLY WHAT HAPPENS. It amazes me when people come into genetics demanding the geneticists do their job, when they could have spent the same amount of time just working the spaceman cookie oven.

HOWEVER, I do not believe that outright REMOVAL is the answer.

I posit an alternative to removal, based off of the lore of a semi-popular creative commons tabletop roleplaying game, where constructing new bodies really isn't the issue with body scarcity; The brain is.
The brain is an incredibly complex organ, the mis-forming of which even subtly can directly alter the resulting person in drastic and unwanted ways.

As such, most parts of the body take not very long to grow, but brains take upwards of six months even using super-fancy nanotech.

The outline for what I am suggesting:

1. Replace cloning and genetics with a single department, shared between science and medbay. Alternatively just replace cloning and genetics with this and keep it a medbay thing, though that makes kind of an awkward split up wall to making synthetics.

2. That department has a number of vats for accepting dna and material, and growing organs. This includes any species you can get dna from; Not just humans.

3. This department, now instead of performing genetic experimentation on full bodies, experiments on lab grown organs and limbs instead. The organs have modular datum, and new fantastic genetic diseases and powers can be created in the future, but for now they just use the existing mutation system, just tied to limbs and organs instead.

4. That department also has machinery for producing synthetic parts and implants from metallic and glassy compounds. Alternatively they beg ROBOTICS for it.

5. That department uses a formation vat to properly form a body from said parts. Just put the proper (or improper) parts in, and a brain, and hit cook. The brain doesn't need to have a client in it; just needs to be a healthy brain or positron. If it has a client ckeyed to it, and isn't suicided or otherwise DNR, they'll get sucked in once the process completes. Depending on how well you know your anatomy, you could get a brand new shiny spessman, or you could get some horrifying amalgamation of lizardman and corgi with four livers. HONK.

6. The problem? Brains. You *NEED* the brain from the original host. Or a positron through an ASSIST interface or in a synthetic head. So you can copy the structure? Cool. Now spend six months growing it! It's not very feasible in the short ss13 round time.

7. Change brains. They can be directly damaged, and while they can be repaired, make it so there is a point at which they become too damaged to make use of or repair. Repeated gunshots to the head or fire are good ways of accomplishing this. Now there's a reason to save the captain from being a hostage.

8. To combat the above, as a medium or high tech R&D discovery, basically just port neural lace and use only the lace part as an R&D thing, with a scanning machine. Scan someone in using neural lace and store them on a disk for later. UNFORTUNATELY YOU STILL NEED A BRAIN TO PUT IT ON, but the brain can be a blank one you get from some other source, like a monkey man. People restored from echos, of course, only remember from the point they were last echo scanned.

((SOURCE FOR #8, https://github.com/Baystation12/Baystation12/pull/12576 ))



Specifics that might need to happen for this:

Icon requirements not already met by porting or existing dmi:
1. Vats + Animation of growing generic organ
2. Body vat + Animation of processing
3. Better Neural Lace Icon
4. Alternative sprite for genetics console to be a vat-like device, shows content.
5. Maybe alternate organ sprites for radiation damaged organs and damaged brains?
6. Alternate humanoid sprites for weird mutant parts and bits and corgis and whatnot.

Map Requirements:
1. Repiping
2. Re-wiring
3. Re-everything-ing

Code requirements:
1. Lots of datums. So many datums. Basically re-write genetics from scratch.
2. Better brain damage tracking
3. Lots of commenting out.
4. Code for working the vats, and the genetic console.
5. Porting of lace and r&d requirements.
6. Implementation of a new department and ID access levels
7. Char setup UI modifications

Balancing:
1. Implement
2. ???
3. Profit!